please don't google that

Soooo

Here’s me taking a go at writing prompts. I’m not very direct, so if you can just bear with my long winding babble, please.

To start it off, I’m far from kind.

It doesn’t take much digging up to affirm that I’m actually a pretty crappy person. For the most part, I dislike people. I’m lazy. I’m quick to judge. I lash out a lot of misplaced anger. I don’t do things unless I can see there’s something in it for me. I lack a lot of empathy. I’m a pretty vindictive jerk. All of these traits- I’m not proud of them, but I often state them. I find that saying them early on lessens people’s standards and their tendency to breach my personal space, take advantage of me, or think it’s okay to constantly demand my presence as if it’s an obligation. I don’t really talk much. I’m not good at saying no. I dislike all the niceties entailed involved in first-base friendships. (Going to the bathroom together, going home together, spending lunch together, compromising my schedule to accommodate their plans… the list goes on.)

It eats me up, the guilt of knowing and still being who I am, yet I’m so used to life this way; it seems awful trying to change now.

Random acts of kindness are my oases.

When I just go, sure, I’ll do this. I bet she can finally release that breath she’s been holding in for a while now. I bet he’ll have a smile all day long. It’s eating a minty ticktack after a series of flavors. I don’t like mint much, but I don’t hate it either. It’s good occasionally, which what makes it special.

I like the idea that I’m making someone’s day brighter without them knowing it was me. A note. A sound. A word. A book. If I look at it a certain way, I still do get something out of this. I’m still doing it for something, just not what I usually go for. (But that thought just makes me a little frustrated, the inescapable sense that I’ll always be selfish, and I prefer not to dwell on that.)

I’d feel uncomfortable specifically stating each and every act though. In my head, ‘an act of kindness’, can’t be divided into little moments or instances. It all just culminates into this one act of ‘I made someone happy about living today’. Just one movie I pause and play at random intervals.

I guess just cause I seldom indulge, it means more to me than it does to the people I do it for. I’ll never know, and that’s what makes it different and special to me. An act of kindness to others is the biggest act of kindness I give myself.